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Full-Text Articles in Law
Dividing Crime, Multiplying Punishments, John F. Stinneford
Dividing Crime, Multiplying Punishments, John F. Stinneford
UF Law Faculty Publications
When the government wants to impose exceptionally harsh punishment on a criminal defendant, one of the ways it accomplishes this goal is to divide the defendant’s single course of conduct into multiple offenses that give rise to multiple punishments. The Supreme Court has rendered the Double Jeopardy Clause, the Cruel and Unusual Punishments Clause, and the rule of lenity incapable of handling this problem by emptying them of substantive content and transforming them into mere instruments for effectuation of legislative will.
This Article demonstrates that all three doctrines originally reflected a substantive legal preference for life and liberty, and a …
Punishment Without Culpability, John F. Stinneford
Punishment Without Culpability, John F. Stinneford
UF Law Faculty Publications
For more than half a century, academic commentators have criticized the Supreme Court for failing to articulate a substantive constitutional conception of criminal law. Although the Court enforces various procedural protections that the Constitution provides for criminal defendants, it has left the question of what a crime is purely to the discretion of the legislature. This failure has permitted legislatures to evade the Constitution’s procedural protections by reclassifying crimes as civil causes of action, eliminating key elements (such as mens rea) or reclassifying them as defenses or sentencing factors, and authorizing severe punishments for crimes traditionally considered relatively minor.
The …